archaeology.org 55
extended beyond the heavily fortified enclosure. Excavations
near the charnel mound have turned up Viking weapons—an
arrowhead, a fragment of an ax—as well as lead gaming pieces
and evidence of metalworking. Several clinker nails typically
used in ship construction have also been found. “We know that
they moved up and down the rivers, and their ships would have
needed frequent repairs,” says Jarman. “They were probably
getting ready for the next season’s attack.”
After overwintering at Repton from 873 to 874 , the Viking
Great Army split in two. One part, under the leadership of
Guthrum, headed south and was ultimately defeated in 878
by Wessex and its king, Alfred the Great. To make peace,
Guthrum was baptized along with 30 of his warriors, and
ended up reigning as an Anglo-Saxon-style king over a swath
of territory allocated to him by Alfred. The other part of the
army headed north and went on to “share out the land,” as the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle puts it, in Northumbria in 876 , Mercia
in 877 , and East Anglia in 880. This seems to suggest that
the Vikings took over vast stretches of England, but how did
it work exactly? “We don’t really know,” says Kershaw. “The
consensus is that they do take over the Anglo-Saxon estates,
but I think you probably have Anglo-Saxon communities left
in place alongside the new Scandinavian ones.”T
he area of northern and eastern England inhabited
by the Vikings ultimately came to be known as the
Danelaw, after the Anglo-Saxons’ belief that most of
the invaders had come from Denmark. New evidence suggests
that once the army members settled there, large numbers of
Viking women came over to join them. Kershaw has analyzed
metal-detected finds from rural parts of the Danelaw and
identified 125 women’s brooches of types that have turned up
nowhere else in England, but have been found in Scandinavia,
particularly in Denmark, and date to the Viking Age. “It’s clear
that these items are coming in on the clothing of women arriv-
ing from southern Scandinavia to settle in rural England,” she
says. “So I think there is a second wave of migration follow-
ing the settlement of the Danelaw that includes women and
children.” The discovery of brooches that mix Anglo-Saxon
and Scandinavian elements indicates that the two communi-
ties intermingled to a great degree. “These styles are seen as
somehow fashionable by the locals,” says Kershaw. “There is a
desire to emulate these styles, which suggests that Scandina-
vians are either in political control or they’re seen as exotic.”
The Anglo-Saxons, united under the House of Wessex,
regained rule of the Danelaw by the mid-tenth century, but the
Scandinavian influence endured. In a 1086 survey of England
called the Domesday Book, nearly half the place names in York-
shire are Scandinavian. “It’s not just towns and villages that
have these names,” says Kershaw. “It’s really small features of
the rural landscape, such as rivers, hedgerows, and little parks.”
More than a thousand years after the Vikings first arrived, and
despite their eventual defeat, their influence remains etched
into the fabric of England to this day. nDaniel Weiss is senior editor at Archaeology.Biddle, reflecting back on the discovery. “He looks as though
someone stabbed him more or less in the eyes. But the real
great wound, which we found immediately upon excavation,
was a huge cut into the inner side of his left femur. It could only
have been made by someone standing above him, perhaps with
a heavy sword or an ax.” A boar’s tusk had been placed between
the warrior’s thighs, possibly to replace genitalia damaged or
severed in his final battle.
Many more Vikings appear to have been buried in a char-
nel mound outside the fortified enclosure, in what was once
an Anglo-Saxon mausoleum. There, Biddle discovered the
disarticulated remains of at least 264 people. The remains
belonged overwhelmingly to adult males. Found among them
were an iron ax, two fighting knives, and five silver pennies
dating to 872 – 874. As part of a new archaeological examina-
tion of the site, radiocarbon dating and analysis of the bones
have demonstrated that they date to the time when the army
overwintered at Repton and that they had been subjected to
extensive violence and trauma. Cat Jarman of the University of
Bristol, codirector of the current project at Repton, suggests
that many of those whose bones were found in the deposit
were Viking warriors killed in battle elsewhere and then buried
during the winter. “We don’t actually know what happened
to the thousands of people who died in battles that we read
about in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” she says. “But there are a
lot of examples from across the Viking world of people moving
bones, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the Viking Great Army
took bones from battle sites and put them in this context.”
It also appears that the overwintering camp at Repton
Scandinavian-style jewelry discovered in East Anglia, such as
a disc brooch (top) and a gilt silver pendant (above), both
shown front and back, suggest Viking women migrated to
England in the late 9th to early 10th centuries.